Kaseya-Unitrends Merger Analyzed: What MSPs Need to Know

The rationale behind the merger makes sense; it adds backup services as another service line Kaseya can offer its MSPs. Arguably, once integrated, these service lines will become seamless for any Kaseya user and encourage MSPs to ditch their current backup vendor and use Unitrends. Simple enough to understand.

RMM Vendor Consolidation

As we have said previously on this site, there has been a trend for the past several years amongst the vendors (servicing MSPs) to acquire, merge, and consolidate technologies. MSPAlliance has argued consistently that this consolidation was desperately needed to "energize" the languishing and stagnant vendor community.

M&A is the lifeblood of industry and crucial in its ability to refresh the old by consolidation and produce something new. Maybe that is what will happen here. Countless similar RMM & PSA deals have occurred over the past few years and still the MSP community thrives. So, we can deduce that these market changes have not harmed the MSP community...yet.

The trend, however, is to produce great efficiencies by offering more services through a single vendor relationship. Doing this does produce another side effect, which is the MSPs using Kaseya must now withstand the inevitable pressures of ditching their current backup vendor and moving to Unitrends.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong this approach. It's natural and it makes sense from a business perspective. But, there are always consequences, and the unintended consequences can be the most destructive.

RMM Landscape Today

Today, MSPs have the same number of choices when it comes to the RMM, ticketing, security, and backup vendors they had yesterday. If anything, there are a few new entrants into the market (mostly at the smaller end of the SMB market) attempting to secure a beachhead and establish themselves. What has changed is the market pressure to choose your RMM company carefully, because you are no longer just picking an RMM solution. You also are picking a ticketing, security, and backup vendor as well. Even if these are unbundled solutions, the marketing and sales pressures, not to mention the assimilation and integration of these technologies into a single pane of glass can become significant.

Gone are the days when an MSP made a standalone choice for a vendor. Today, they are forced choose "communities", which makes maintaining non-homogenous vendor relationships potentially more complicated.